On test day, you’re likely to see one long RC passage and a couple of
short ones. This practice set includes an example of each. Don’t forget to go
over the answers and explanations that follow.

Directions:
After reading each passage, choose the best answer to each
question. Answer all questions following a passage on the basis
of what is stated or
implied in that passage.

Pure science is a science of discovery, a science of

figuring out the physical, chemical, and biological laws

governing the universe. A scientist engaged in pure science gains

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knowledge of a limited sort. He or she may gain an understanding

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of the actions of particles under certain circumstances, or of

the processes which make up the nitrogen cycle, but a researcher

who discovers the whys and hows of scientific laws does not

attempt to change those laws. Pure scientific research thus does

not impinge on the rights or privacy of particular individuals or

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communities.

Applied science, in contrast, involves an effort to harness

the knowledge gained by pure science for the purpose of achieving

specific ends. As a result, applied science holds the potential

to greatly benefit humanity, but it also holds the potential to

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cause great harm, such as the construction of the atomic bomb

built specifically to destroy. It is only when science has become

manifest in society through application that it can impinge on

human rights.

Literary audiences have traditionally favored writers whose

works appear to spring from the richness of lived experience.

Ernest Hemingway and Jack London come to mind as semi-mythic

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action figures who documented their experiences in art. Next to

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the travails of nineteenth-century Russian novelist Fyodor

Dostoyevsky, the adventures of even these lively American writers

pale in comparison. Dostoyevsky was arrested for treason against

the state, kept in solitary confinement for ten months, tried and

condemned to death, and brought to the scaffold only to have his

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execution stayed at the last moment by an order of the Czar

delivered dramatically on horseback. To say that his life was as

dark and dramatic as the books he wrote is no mere marketing

gimmick, no ritual of hyperbole characterizing the incessant and

obligatory hype announcing the release of every modern novel and

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Hollywood spectacular.

Considering such a biography, it is commonplace to emphasize

the direct link between Dostoyevsky’s life and his novels. This

view is not without merit: Dostoyevsky suffered greatly, and he

wrote with great power and passion about the prospect of

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attaining redemption through suffering. Years of communing with

hardened criminals in a Siberian prison yielded passages of

penetrating insights into the criminal mind. Dostoyevsky suffered

from a destructive gambling addiction and debilitating epileptic

seizures, maladies he imparted to some of his characters. He

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faithfully and poignantly reproduced in his writing his most

harrowing personal experience: the excruciating moments awaiting

execution and the confused euphoria following its sudden,

seemingly miraculous annulment.

However, the popular view of Dostoyevsky as a preeminent

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example of the synergistic relation between the artist and his

work tends to obscure the contradictions that inevitably infuse

even the most coherent artist’s life. As Dostoyevsky himself

taught via brilliantly realistic character portrayals, each human

being consists of a labyrinth of internal inconsistencies,

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competing desires, and mysterious motivations that belie the

notion of a completely unified personality. One of Dostoyevsky’s

most vital insights concerns the individual’s struggle to bring

his contradictory being into harmony with the world. The fact

that Dostoyevsky himself fused his being with his art to a near

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miraculous extent does not suggest the absence of contradiction

between the two. He was, by fellow Russian writer Ivan Turgenev’s

account, an odious and obstinate individual who nonetheless

managed to portray the highest human types in characters such as

Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov

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. In his writings Dostoyevsky vehemently challenged rationality

as the supreme guide to human affairs, yet in his life he strove

to perfect an ultra-rational gambling methodology to alleviate

his crushing financial difficulties. Far from masking his

brilliance, such contradictions reveal the fallible human behind

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it, making Dostoyevsky’s accomplishments all the more remarkable.

Guided Explanations

1. E

Step 1: Skim and Outline. We trust that you made your way
through the passage and jotted down its main features in a way that makes
sense to you.

Step 2: Read the Question and Search for Triggers. The
triggers are According to the passage, which tells us we’re
dealing with a Detail question, and differs, which tells us
we’re looking for differences between pure and applied science.

Step 3: Locate Relevant Information and Make a Prediction.
The phrase in contrast in the first line of
paragraph 2 is a great clue as to where the difference between pure and
applied science will be found. Reread that part carefully if you feel you
need to enhance your quick skim of that section.

The contrast cited is that applied science tries to harness scientific
knowledge to have an effect on the world, so it does differ from pure
science in the scope of its intentions, statement III. The last line of both
paragraphs also indicate that statement I is correct: Applied science can
impact negatively upon people’s lives in a way that pure science cannot.
Statement II is cited as well in the author’s discussion of the idea that
applied science has the potential to produce both benefits and harm, a more
complex scenario than the neutral fact-seeking of pure scientific endeavors.

Step 4: Match Your Prediction to the Answer Choices. E is
correct because as we have seen, statements I, II, and III all represent
differences between pure and applied science.

2. D

Step 1: Skim and Outline. You’ve already done this before
tackling the first question, so move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Read the Question and Search for Triggers. The
trigger phrase is author consider an example of pure
science, which tells us we’ll need to reason from the information
presented to deduce something about the author’s beliefs. That means this is
an Implied Information question.

Step 3: Locate Relevant Information and Make a Prediction.
Our trigger words tell us that pure science is the subject of this
one, and we know from our skim of the passage and our brief notes that that
subject is treated mainly in paragraph 1. So that’s the paragraph to head
for if you need to quickly review what pure science is all about. To this
author, pure science is research that has no relation to human industry or
other activities.

Step 4: Match Your Prediction to the Answer Choices.
Only D fits this description, since merely
estimating how much the earth weighs doesn’t in and of itself accomplish
anything other than adding to our knowledge of the universe. The other four
choices describe things that fit quite well into the author’s definition of
applied science: undertakings meant “for the purpose of achieving specific
ends.”

3. A

Step 1: Skim and Outline. As always, perform a quick skim
of the passage and take note on your scrap paper of what you consider the
most relevant points.

Step 2: Read the Question and Search for Triggers. Since
this is a Primary Purpose question, there are no trigger words to speak of,
and the correct answer will reflect a general understanding of what the
author set out to accomplish.

Step 3: Locate Relevant Information and Make a Prediction.
There is no specific information to look for as we’re looking for the
overall purpose of the entire passage. Rather than make a prediction, the
best thing to do is work from the answer choices, so we’ll test the answers
one by one. Remember, we encourage you to “be flexible” as to how to apply
the step method.

A: Choice A comes closest to capturing the
author’s main purpose in the passage. The author doesn’t discount the
popular view regarding the link between Dostoyevsky’s life and works—indeed,
he says that Dostoyevsky “fused his being with his art to a near miraculous
extent.” And if he wanted to disavow the popular view entirely, he wouldn’t
have gone out of his way to support the general merit of this view with
numerous examples in paragraph 2. Instead, he’s trying to take it down a
notch; trying to show that while there was a remarkable
amount of synergy between Dostoyevsky’s life and works, it didn’t reach the
epic proportions that some would have us believe. The author tries to
complete the story by suggesting that there were also contradictions.

B: Achieving harmony with the world is merely an idea
from paragraph 3 that doesn’t encompass the author’s main intention of
discussing synergy and contradiction in Dostoyevsky’s life and works.

C: The author states that the contradictions between
Dostoyevsky’s life and art don’t detract from his accomplishments and even
make them more remarkable. That’s not to say that the author is arguing that
these contradictions enabled his achievements.

D harks back to role players Jack London and Ernest
Hemingway, who aren’t important enough figures to be included as part of the
author’s primary concern. The author didn’t write all of this to merely
compare Dostoyevsky to his American counterparts.

E gets it backward. The author believes that the popular
view of the synergy between Dostoyevsky’s life and art overshadows the
contradictions between those things, not that the contradictions overshadow
the popular view.

4. E

Step 1: Skim and Outline. You’ve already done this, so
move right on to Step 2.

Step 2: Read the Question and Search for Triggers.
The passage cites indicates that this is a
Detail question testing your understanding of some fact presented in the
passage. Elements of novels drawn from personal experience
tells us which fact is being tested, so that is your trigger. Moreover, the
word EXCEPT tells us that this is a special kind of question looking for the
one choice that doesn’t represent something from Dostoyevsky’s experience
that wound up in one of his books.

Step 3: Locate Relevant Information and Make a Prediction.
Elements of Dostoyevsky’s life encapsulated in his novels are found
in paragraph 2, so it makes sense to refresh your memory of those before
trying to answer the question. As we are looking for the
exception, it makes more sense to work from the answer
choices and cross off the ones that appear in paragraph 2.

A, B, C, and D are explicitly mentioned in
the second paragraph as elements of Dostoyevsky’s life that he wrote about
in his books.

E, however, is the odd man out: While the author states
in paragraph 1 that Dostoyevsky was kept in solitary confinement following
his arrest, this event is not mentioned in paragraph 2 as something from
Dostoyevsky’s life that he depicted in his novels.

5. D

Step 1: Skim and Outline. One final question to handle,
so get right to Step 2 to see what it’s after.

Step 3: Locate Relevant Information and Make a Prediction.
Turgenev is only mentioned once near the middle of paragraph 3. So it
pays to reacquaint yourself with this detail by reading a few lines above
and a few lines below the Turgenev bit to put that reference in context.
Dostoyevsky, according to Turgenev, was a revolting and stubborn person, yet
Dostoyevsky portrayed in his works characters embodying the highest human
ideals. This information appears in the passage immediately following the
assertion that there was contradiction between Dostoyevsky’s being and his
art.

Therefore, it is likely that Turgenev’s opinion of Dostoyevsky is
provided as part of an example supporting the author’s contention that
contradiction existed between Dostoyevsky’s life and works.

A: The author supplies no evidence that Dostoyevsky
wasn’t odious and obstinate, as Turgenev maintained.
Turgenev’s depiction therefore isn’t provided to contrast the perception of
Dostoyevsky’s personality with the reality of what he was really like.

B is difficult to decipher, but it appears to be saying
that even an odious and obstinate person can only create characters of the
highest human type. Not only does this make little sense, but the author’s
purpose seems to be the opposite: to illustrate the contradiction inherent
in the fact that such a revolting person can create such characters
at all.

C: The detail in question supports the notion of
contradiction, not synergy. The evidence referred to in C is
found in paragraph 2, not where Turgenev appears in paragraph 3.